Powerful and historical
Zack Davisson | Seattle, WA, USA | 11/16/2001
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This CD is just about perfect. In fact, it's only defect is also an advantage. Alan Lomax attempted to cram every corner of Scotland's musical tradition onto a single CD. This is a monumental task, and only partly successful. On the one hand, pretty much every corner of Scotland's musical tradition is represented. Police bands, boy's choirs, professional folk singers, pub carousers, kid's jump rope games, jacobite battle songs, love songs, port-a-buel, waulking songs, English and Gaelic all find there way onto this CD. It truly is amazing how many songs and styles are represented. What a musical country! On the other hand, "packed" is what you feel like after listening. The songs move quickly from one to the other, with little or no space. A jaunty accordion tune moves into a soulful Gaelic ballad without a breath, then into a peppy English tune with full choir and then into a drunken military rant. It can be a little too much to take in on one sitting.Still, it is hard to complain about this musical treasure. For Scottish folk music, there is no equal to this CD."